Getting their ducks in a row

Monday

Jan 28, 2013 at 10:05 AMMar 27, 2013 at 7:49 AM

The Orange County Register

During the age of Barack Obama's Democrats and Tea Party Republicans we've been confronted by one political party that doesn't seem to care about fiscal responsibility and one that doesn't seem able to effectively defend it. With that in mind, we're pleased to note the tactical savvy that informed congressional Republicans' decision to pass a bill this week that put off for nearly four months a fight over raising the debt ceiling.

Members of Congress have three major fiscal tasks on their to-do list. In addition to the debt ceiling, they also have to 1) address the deep cuts to both domestic and defense spending that are scheduled to take place because of the fiscal cliff's "sequester" process; and, 2) handle the continuing resolution that will provide the funding necessary to keep the federal government's doors open. After failing to get any meaningful spending cuts from the fiscal cliff deal struck this month, House Republicans resolved that they would make up for it in these debates.

The problem they faced was one of sequencing. With the fight over the debt ceiling scheduled to occur first, their leverage was compromised. Republicans knew that, were they to make spending cuts a condition of a debt ceiling increase — and thus raise the specter of default — the White House would accuse them of holding the nation's credit ranking hostage to partisan politics. Indeed, President Obama had already begun to roll out this line of argument.

With an uncharacteristic eye for winning the debate with a group broader than its base, the GOP has decided that the debate over the nation's rapacious spending habits should not be compromised by debt ceiling drama. It is a wise choice. Too many of our recent fiscal debates have been 11th-hour affairs that pit one unpalatable option against another. Breaking that pattern is, in and of itself, a sign of progress.

Some hard-liners on the right have decried the move as a GOP capitulation to President Obama's free-spending ways. We find that view myopic. An increased in the debt ceiling surely would have come sooner or later. There's hardly anyone on Capitol Hill who's actually willing to use the prospect of the nation not paying its bills as anything more than a bargaining chip. So why not reorder the sequence of events in order to maximize the chance that the process will result in meaningful and needed spending cuts?

Of course, we must temper our praise by noting that the outcome remains contingent. Congressional Republicans have laid the predicate for reining in our fiscal incontinence. We'll save our real plaudits, however, for when they actually accomplish it.